Congress, with representatives from all of the states, agreed the United States was much stronger if all states were part of one country. There was no question about that. But there were questions about what rights states had to govern themselves.

Events Leading Up to the
American Civil War

Arguments about states' rights had continued to explode in Congress since the country was first formed
in colonial times. Congress wanted to decide major issues that would affect all
the states. Individual states, especially in the South, wanted the right to
decide major issues for themselves.

As various issues came
up, compromise had been achieved several
times by representatives in Congress fighting for the rights of their individual
states, but each compromise never seemed to solve things for long. Compromise was achieved
again by
Congress in 1820 and again in 1850. In the following decade, several things happened
that made continued compromise more difficult. By 1861, states in the North and
states in the South were at war over the question of states' rights.

This civil war has been
assigned many names by historians including simply The Civil War, as well as the
War of Northern Aggression, the War of Southern Independence, and the War
Between the States. But it was never assigned the name the War to End Slavery
because that was not why this war broke out between the states, not in the
beginning, although laws affecting slaves were something Southern states wanted to decide for themselves.